


Those We Love

by Everren



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Childhood Memories, Couch Sex, Emotional Sex, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Feelings, Flashbacks, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Han's funeral, Memories, Mentions of Cancer, Parent Han Solo, Pregnancy, Sad with a Happy Ending, Surrogacy, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23650165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everren/pseuds/Everren
Summary: Ben and Rey used to be friends, best friends, until one night and some bad news changed everything. Now, after not speaking for months, Rey is about to make the hardest day of Ben's life take a turn he could never have expected.Will he be able to find the forgiveness he so desperately needs before she walks out of his life for good?Written for the Writing Den's Anniversary Fic Exchange 2020!
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 194
Kudos: 468
Collections: Anniversary Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/gifts).



> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)! I hope you like it! <3  
  
---  
  
Today is going to be hard. No, forget that. Today is going to be the hardest day of Ben’s life. He knows it. It’s already turning out to be fucking terrible. The house, which has been deathly silent over the last few days since he arrived, has suddenly become full of people. The oven has been on since seven AM and the doorbell rings every few minutes. Ben never bothers to answer it. One of his mother’s army of helpers will do that. They have taken over, making sure every last detail is paid the attention it deserves. Ben supposes he’s glad they’re here to help his mom. Lord knows, he’s not being very useful.

He’s hiding in his old room with only Chewie to keep him company. The bear of a dog is sprawled out over his bed’s navy blue duvet, freshly laundered for his return — the duvet cover, not the dog — looking frustratingly unbothered about the hum of voices and clip-clop of kitten heels on hardwood floors that drift up from below. Ben wishes he could feel as calm as Chewie looks. He can’t remember the last time he felt calm or unweighted.

Rising from his desk chair with a beleaguered sigh, Ben picks up the black jacket from the bed, absentmindedly brushing off a few long, brown and white hairs before shrugging into it and turning to look in the mirror that hangs on the open door of his teenage self’s closet. He lifts a hand and straightens the thin, black tie that bisects his white shirt front, blinking at his reflection with slightly glazed eyes.

He’s worn this suit perhaps a thousand times before. It’s part of his regular wardrobe rotation for work. Familiar. Yet, somehow, today, it looks more sombre than it ever has before. He thinks it must be something to do with the long expression he wears it with, or perhaps the way his eyes peer out at him from deep sockets, bruised with shadows of exhaustion.

There’s a soft knock on his bedroom door and Ben looks around as it’s opened, Chewie leaping down off the bed to greet whoever is on the other side.

“The car’s gonna be here soon, kid,” Luke says, poking his grizzled, weather-worn face around the edge of the wood. Ben just nods in response, taking one last glance at his reflection before he closes the closet door and shoves his hands into his pants pockets to follow his uncle down the stairs.

There aren’t as many people here as he’d thought, he realises as he reaches the bottom of the stairs; just a few of his mother’s friends from the council and her administrator, the girl with sandy blonde hair. What is her name? Connix, he thinks. She’s been here a lot, since Ben arrived home, barely leaving his mother’s side. He should be grateful — it takes attention away from him and what a useless son he’s been — but he can’t help the spark of irritation he feels every time he overhears the easy way they talk to each other.

Not that Leia hasn’t _tried_ to talk to him. She has. He just hasn’t given her much in return. It’s easier not to. It feels like there’s a floodgate inside him which has been firmly shut for months and that’s the way Ben wants to keep it. It’s the only way he’s going to get through this.

The car that pulls up first outside the Organa-Solo house is long and sleek and black, with windows all around, through which the simple, wooden coffin is visible. The funeral home has dressed it beautifully with a whole town’s worth of flowers. Someone has paid for one of the wreaths to be arranged in the shape of a kit plane, with a line of blue hydrangea petals making a stripe along the tail in a perfect imitation of the Falcon. Thoughtful, Ben thinks, breathing through the tightness which is trying to spread through his chest. He wishes it’d been his idea.

His mother is already heading for the second vehicle in the now stationary procession, her arm laced through Luke’s, and Ben follows after them, running his hand through his dark hair as he stands and waits his turn to climb into the back of the black Lincoln town car. There are two seats facing forward, which Leia and her twin have occupied, and a bench seat along the side, facing the tinted window opposite, which Ben slides onto, tucking his long legs awkwardly into the space.

One of the funeral directors closes the door behind him and, all at once, the silence in the car is oppressive. Ben swallows, hating the way his shirt collar digs into his already tight throat. He hears his mother sigh and he glances up at her, seeing her wipe some moisture from the corner of her eye as she looks out of her window at the front lawn: green, framed by the semi-circular, gravel driveway and stretching away down to the road. He wonders which long ago, happy memory has been successful in cracking through her stoic exterior. Ben lets his own gaze wander outside where it snags on the tire-swing hanging from the big, old live oak near the bottom of the drive. For a moment, he recalls a few happy memories of his own that had played out there. In the end, though, they only serve to remind him how long it’s been since he’s had something to feel happy about.

“The flowers are great,” says Luke as the funeral procession pulls out of the driveway and starts rolling slowly towards the funeral home. Ben doesn’t say anything but Leia nods, the comment drawing her attention back inside the car. “I saw Lando sent a wreath shaped like the Falcon.”

“Yes. That was very thoughtful of him,” Leia says, her voice sounding huskier than usual, thicker somehow.

“He wanted to come but he’s still recovering from the surgery.”

“It’s alright; I know. Jannah called,” Leia soothes. “She’s a nice girl.”

“Talking of nice girls,” Luke says guilefully. “Have you heard from Rey?”

Ben’s attention had wandered outside again, beyond the pane of tinted glass in the long sidewall of the Lincoln, but it’s immediately drawn back by this turn in the conversation, no doubt as Luke intended.

“Oh, yes, she called just after we put out the announcement. Said she’s coming to pay her respects. It’ll be good to see her,” Leia is saying with genuine warmth in her voice.

“I’ve missed her,” Luke says fondly. “How is she doing?”

There’s an expectant pause, during which Ben realises his uncle is looking at him for an answer, but he just shrugs and it’s left to Leia to say, “She was sorry to hear about Han, but she said she’s good otherwise. She wanted to come sooner but she’s got a lot going on.”

Luke gives a gruff grunt and nods before they lapse into silence again.

Ben looks down so he can watch the shuddering rise and fall of his chest and listen to the quick thud-thud of his own pulse rushing in his ears. Rey is coming. Here. Today. Now. It was already shaping up to be the hardest day of his life and that was _before_ knowing he has to face her again.

It’s been months. Seven months and five days, to be precise, since the day she’d left town. He’d caught a final glimpse of her through the window of her battered, old Jeep as she’d roared past him at the stop sign on her street. He’d been too late that day; he’d missed her by seconds. She hadn’t seen him, hadn’t recognised the new, black Civic he’d owned for less than a month. To her, he was just another motorist, beeping impatiently at a junction.

She probably hadn’t been expecting him to show up. After all, they’d already said their goodbyes, politely, distantly, by text that morning. She’d reassured him that there was no need for him to see her off in person, as though five years of friendship could be rounded off with a handful of blue and grey bubbles on a screen. He’d decided at the last minute to ignore her suggestion to stay away, decided that he couldn’t let her leave, not with things the way they were between them. But he’d been too late. He is always too late.

They’d spoken since then, of course, text a few times, and made promises to meet up that neither one of them had ever seen through, but eventually the texts had dried up too. Rationally Ben tells himself she’s probably just been busy, like his mom said, with her new job and her new life and her new friends — he’d noticed bitterly that she’d mentioned the name Finn more than once in her last few texts — but deep down he knows it’s because of what happened that night the month before she’d left. Nothing has been the same between them since then.

Nothing has been the same, period; everything has changed. Ben’s life has fallen apart in the time it’s taken Spring to become Fall and now, with Winter setting in, he can already feel the cold seeping into the hollow places this year has left inside him. He hasn’t even cried. Not once. His dad has been dead for the best part of two weeks and Ben hasn’t shed a single tear. He just feels…

~

Numb. That’s how he feels. Ever since his parents sat him down in the living room of the family home that afternoon and told him the bad news, he’s just felt numb. They’d waited until after lunch to tell him, let him waste time complaining about his caseload and the price of gas and Doritos, sitting on their bombshell until just an hour before he was due to leave.

“Happy memories are important,” Leia had told him, calmly and firmly, when he’d demanded to know why it hadn’t been the first thing out of their mouths, why they hadn’t called him the moment they’d got the diagnosis. “We need to make them while we still can.”

“You make it sound like I’m dead already,” Han had chided, brushing off his wife’s serious tone with a shrug of his shoulder. “We’ve got plenty of time left.”

“You just said they told you it was inoperable,” Ben had reasoned. “That’s not ‘plenty of time’. The odds of you making it to—”

“Never tell me the odds,” Han had interrupted, fixing Ben with a stern look. “You know that.”

Ben does know. He had grown up with his dad’s ‘never tell me the odds’ mentality, even though it had always boggled his mind slightly how someone could live like that. Ben had inherited his mother’s studiousness and attention to detail. While Han was out building kit planes, playing endless games of fetch with Chewie and being their small town’s local hero, Ben had spent his childhood hunched over his desk, consuming book after book on subjects like mythology, data science and true crime. He had never been good at baseball like Han was, never been as confident around people, never learnt how to talk his way out of trouble. In fact, Ben had been sure he hadn’t inherited much from Han at all, except perhaps his nose. That had been until he’d learned to fly. It had turned out that flying was the one thing they did have in common: their natural ability, their skill, their daring, their love of being in the air.

“Dad!” Ben had squealed the first time Han had taken him up, strapped tightly against his chest as the Falcon rolled over in the cyan sky.

“What? You don’t like it?” Han laughed, launching into a second roll straight after the first, to Ben’s delighted cries, before letting the plane level out again.

“Mom said it’s dangerous,” Ben shouted, trying not to let the excitement flood his voice from the thrill of breaking the rules.

“Well I won’t tell her if you don’t,” Han replied conspiratorially, lowering his head to speak close to Ben’s ear.

“You told me women always find out the truth,” Ben reminded him smartly. He felt the rumbling in his dad’s chest at that, as Han chuckled to himself.

“Yeah, well, the odds of it staying our little secret might be low, but you know what I always say?”

“Never tell me the odds!” they finished together in a triumphant shout.

“Now, you wanna take the controls?”

Ben turned his head to try to peer up at Han, not quite sure he’d heard him correctly.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you, kid. Who else would I be talking to?”

Ben reached out his hands to grasp the controls that Han had just released, his little knuckles turning white around them and his dark eyes growing wide with concentration.

“That’s right,” Han reassured him. “Just keep her steady.”

Gradually, Ben’s hands relaxed a little around the joystick and he started to lean forward to try to peer down at the ground as it slid past, hundreds of feet beneath them.

“You’re doing great, kid,” Han praised, leaning back with his hands raised behind his tawny head. Ben beamed so widely he thought his face might split in two.

“Dad?” he asked a while later, sounding hesitant. “Can I do a roll, like you did?”

“I don’t know,” came Han’s reply. “Can you?”

He could, it had turned out.

Actually, Han had taught him that he could do pretty much anything he wanted to, if he put his mind to it. Perhaps that’s why he feels so numb right now, because there’s nothing to be done about _this_.

Ben’s cell phone gives a shrill ring beside him on the passenger seat and he looks down to see Rey’s picture flash up on the screen. It brings him out of his thoughts with a jolt and he hits the button on his steering wheel to accept the call.

“Are you coming up?”

Ben ducks his head and peers out through the window of his new Civic, up at the familiar apartment building he’s parked outside. He can see Rey’s shape silhouetted against the light that streams out from her living room window, two storeys up.

“Yeah,” he says after a pause that’s perhaps a beat too long.

“Are you okay?”

Trust Rey to know, from just one word, that something’s up.

“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll be right up.”

“Okay.”

He can tell from her tone that she’s not convinced. There’s a moment of silence.

“Did you get the Doritos?”

~

“Don’t forget the Doritos.” She’s using that bossy, exasperated tone she has which implies she means business.

“I won’t. I’m stopping right now,” Ben laughs, turning the steering wheel to swing his car into the gas station.

“Good,” she chirps. “The Nacho Cheese ones, not Cool Ranch. Or maybe just one of each.”

“I thought you were going to order pizza.”

“I am.” She doesn’t need to add the, ‘So what?’ It’s implied by her tone. 

Ben smiles and presses his teeth into his lower lip as he shakes his head. He is a big guy, he keeps himself in shape, and even he can’t put away as much food as Rey does. By all rights, she should be the size of a house, but she isn’t. She’s lean and wiry, with hips that bow delicately outwards just below her small waist, like the elegant shoulders of a violin. She works out, he knows, and volunteers at a local junior Taekwondo class, but Ben is still not sure how she manages to work up such an insatiable appetite.

“Stop it.”

Ben clears his throat, his eyebrows rising. “Stop what?”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Am not,” he denies, smiling broadly, glad she can’t see his face.

“You are. I know you, Ben Solo. Just buy the bloody Doritos and get going to your parents’ house. You’re going to be late.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.” He kills the engine and tucks his cell phone between his ear and his shoulder as the call switches from hands-free to manual.

“You haven’t. You’re always late.”

“They should be used to it by now, then,” he rationalises as he climbs out of the car and starts across the forecourt towards the little shop.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Okay, see you tonight.”

“Seven o’clock.” The tone is back. “And for once in your life, don’t be late. Please. It’s the penultimate episode and I want to watch it live.”

“Bye, Rey.”

“Byeee!”

~

Ben glances at the illuminated clock on his car’s dash. 19:23. He’s late.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks gently.

“I’ll be right up.”

He ends the call before she can ask him again, and leans over to grab the two bags of Doritos from the back seat. It feels like a million years ago that he bought them now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)! 

It could be a room in somebody’s home, Ben muses, if it weren’t for the coffin at the front and the rows of chairs all facing it — unusual living room furniture in the standard house. The walls are painted a light, sage green colour above the white wainscoting, and soft, cream drapery dampens the crisp winter light that spills in through the windows. The smell of pollen is unseasonably heavy in the air from the festoons of flowers that drape across the low dais where the coffin now lies, resting on a wooden altar.

They had asked whether Ben had wanted to help carry the coffin. He’d never responded to the voicemail. As a result, he’d followed his mother and Luke into the funeral home behind the four hired pallbearers, before taking his seat in the front row of chairs.

Now his eyes are fixed on the base of the wooden lectern that holds the old picture of his dad and Chewie — an enlarged copy of the photo that hangs in his parents’ hallway: Han, crouched on the front lawn, wrestling a Newfoundland puppy, with paws too big for its body, for a ball that’s already trailing slobber, grinning up at the camera with the smile that creases the corners of his eyes and, for some reason, makes Ben remember the smell of barbecue and wisteria blossom.

There had been a small crowd of people waiting outside the funeral home when the procession of cars had arrived and they’re filing into the room now, filling up the rows behind where Ben sits with his mother and uncle. Rey hadn’t been among them — he’d looked. While he should have been watching, glassy eyed, as four strangers carried his father into the white, weather-boarded, Colonial building where they would part for the last time, Ben had been scanning the crowd for the only face he cares if he sees today. He’s a terrible son.

He glances back, every now and then, through the sea of heads, trying to see if she’s arrived yet. People see him and seem to think he’s trying to acknowledge them. They give him encouraging, sympathetic smiles that make his stomach twist uncomfortably. Each time, he forces himself to nod, politely, and turns back to face the front, unsatisfied.

They close the doors once everyone is inside and Ben glances back one more time, just to be sure. The gentle music, which has been playing soothingly in the background ever since they came in, begins to fade and Ben hears the celebrant stepping up onto the dais to begin the simple, Humanist ceremony his dad had made them promise to arrange. Beside him, Leia clears her throat pointedly. Ben is twisting back in his seat when he finally sees her.

She must have come in at the last moment; she’s sitting in the back row, mostly obscured by the people in front of her, but Ben recognises the chestnut wisps of hair which frame her face. He doesn’t need to see all of her. Memory fills in the rest: shoulder length hair pulled back in a loose bun at the back of her head; kind, hazel eyes, which narrow slightly when she smiles, crowded by her cheeks; tawny freckles sprinkled across a lightly tanned brow, the individual dots only visible when they’re close enough that you could brush them with your lips if you wanted to. Ben does want to. He always has, both before and after he learnt what it would feel like.

“Welcome to you all,” the celebrant begins and Ben turns to face the front, something humming inside him. “You are all here today because you have one important thing in common: your lives have been touched by the good fortune of having known Han Solo.”

Ben isn’t sure what to do with his face so he just stares straight ahead and ignores the feeling of hundreds of eyes trained on the back of his head.

“Today, we will join our hearts to celebrate Han’s life; to express our love and respect for him, and to bring some consolation to his family: his wife Leia, their son—”

~

“Ben?”

Ben blinks, and turns his head to look at Rey, unsure when she started talking to him. Judging by the look on her face and the fact that she’s paused the TV on the opening crawl, she’s had to say his name more than once to get his attention. She’s holding out the open bag of Doritos towards him, and had clearly been waiting for him to take a handful, but he can tell from her expression that she’d stopped thinking about snacks a while ago.

“I can tell there’s something wrong,” she levels gently, and Ben feels his eyes slip downwards to the threadbare, brown fabric of her couch. “You know you can talk to me. About anything.”

He does know. Rey is the best thing in his life, the first person who’s really known him, the first person who’s ever even tried. Ever since she’d waltzed into the class he’d been TAing at the University of Chandrila, in her Galaxy Wars t-shirt and combat boots, she’s been the one part of his life he hasn’t been able to do without.

They had initially bonded over the show they both loved, after Rey had noticed him staring at her chest that first day, and had spent hours debating the pros and cons of Z-fighters over cold beers and hot fries in the pub just outside campus. Not long afterwards, they’d agreed to meet weekly at Ben’s apartment to watch the latest episodes. After all, it had made sense; he’d had a TV with cable, and a roommate who spent most of his time out of the apartment playing table-top wargames to avoid socialising with him, while Rey had been struggling to get her weekly Galaxy Wars fix by finding illegal streams online, which — she’d informed him with great woe — often punctuated her viewing with porn, Russian subtitles, or both. It had been the perfect solution.

When the season had ended, Ben had expected their weekly TV nights to end too, but somehow they hadn’t. When they’d run out of new episodes of Galaxy Wars, they’d seamlessly switched to another series they both liked, as though what they were watching had, somewhere along the line, become secondary to the fact they were watching it together. Since then, whenever Galaxy Wars was out of season or on break, they’ve always alternated choosing what to watch and, in that way, they’ve made their way through all eight series of Game of Thrones (Ben’s choice) and the entire back catalogue of Modern Family (Rey’s), as well as most of the true crime documentary series available through Ben’s Netflix subscription. Now they sometimes hang out at his apartment, sometimes at hers — she bought a TV with her first pay check after graduating — but it’s an unwritten rule that Ben always provides the snacks and Rey always provides the kind of companionship and understanding that only Rey can.

She is, without doubt, his best friend. There isn’t a thing he can’t talk to her about — well, there _is_ one thing, but it’s for the sake of their friendship that he’s never brought that particular subject up — so he isn’t entirely sure why he’s holding back on her now.

She’s watching him when he looks up again, all wide, hazel eyes and concern, and he takes a deep breath before saying, “It’s my dad.”

At once, he sees worry flash across her face. Rey likes Han. In fact, she probably has more in common with his dad than he has. They’ve been firm friends ever since Ben introduced Rey to his family, back when she’d started interning for Luke after graduating. It’s only natural that she would be worried. It was probably selfish of him not to have told her sooner. Still, his mouth works around the words, not quite sure how to say them, worried that, when he does, they’ll become true.

“He has a brain tumor. It’s cancerous.”

“But he’ll be alright?” Rey says quickly, always the optimist. Ben’s heavy silence is answer enough. Her face crumples as he watches and he feels an aching in his own heart at the sight — the first thing he’s really felt since he left his parents over an hour ago. They’re both quiet for a long time.

Eventually Ben shrugs. “Probably all those times I made him roll over in the Falcon. Mom always told us not to do it.”

Rey frowns at him, reminding him that now is no time for his dark sense of humour. The thing is, he _does_ feel responsible, for some reason. Even though he rationally knows there is nothing he could have done to prevent this, he feels guilty. Perhaps it’s because he only visits his parents once a month, even though they live less than a half hour away. Perhaps it’s because he’s never been the kind of son Han Solo deserves. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t know what to _do_ now…

“How’re they dealing with it?”

“Fine,” Ben snorts, shaking his head. “My mother’s acting like this is something she can litigate against, and Dad’s acting like there’s nothing wrong at all.” He slumps down on the couch a little, his knees jutting out in front of him and making his legs look too long for his body.

“And how are _you_ dealing with it?” Rey asks quietly. Ben lifts his chin to look up at her, feeling a pained expression draw his eyebrows together.

“I—” He gulps, and lifts a hand to run through his hair. “I feel—” He sighs. “I don’t know. I guess it hasn’t really sunken in yet.”

Rey gets up and puts the bag of Doritos down on the coffee table, beside their untouched beer bottles. When she sits back down, she’s much closer. He feels one of her small, hot hands settle on his shoulder and he glances down at it, his jaw tight.

“You feel numb?” she guesses. She always has been one of the most intuitive people he knows. He licks his lips before nodding.

“And you feel like you should be feeling something, so you’re beating yourself up because you’re not?” There’s a moment of stillness before he nods again.

“Oh, Ben.” She leans forward with a sigh to rest her cheek against the ball of his shoulder, close to where her fingers are softly stroking. He can feel her body radiating heat against the side of his arm. He swallows, and hesitantly lets his head tilt against hers.

She’s right, of course. She usually is. Objectively he knows he should be feeling grief or anger, perhaps denial, and he thinks those emotions are there, somewhere, deep down, but he hasn’t been able to access them yet. At the moment, all he can feel is the warmth of Rey’s cheek against his shoulder and the way her fingers have started to run through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I want you to know I’m here for you,” Rey murmurs, her breath tickling his throat. “Whatever you need. Whenever you need it.”

Ben tries a smile, although he thinks it probably appears rather wan. “Thanks.”

“No, I mean it,” Rey says, her voice a little more determined than before, and Ben catches his breath as she wraps her free arm around him, her hot, little hand coming to rest against his chest. “Whatever you need.” She shifts a little against his arm and he feels her head tilting up towards him, can feel her eyes coming to rest on his face as she breathes, “What do you need, Ben?”

His mouth feels incredibly dry all of a sudden. Shivers race across his skin, setting the fine, dark hairs on his arms on end, and when he turns his head to meet her gaze, she’s so close. Was she always this close?

“I just want to forget that today ever happened,” he murmurs quietly, feeling strangely hypnotised by the way her dark eyelashes flutter.

“But what do you _need_?”

His tongue flickers out to try to moisten his lips and perhaps it’s his imagination but he thinks Rey’s eyes follow the movement.

“I need to feel something.”

Rey nods as though she understands, and then her hand is sliding up his chest to stroke his jaw and he can feel _that_. A breath trembles past his lips and she must hear it because she catches her own lip between her teeth, questioning.

Ben gulps.

“Don’t—”

Rey winces and makes to pull her hand away.

“Don’t stop!” Ben chokes out, and she freezes in place, her fingertips close to his chin.

The moment between when Rey isn’t kissing him and when she is seems to happen in slow motion. She studies him, and all he can do is stare back. Then she’s swaying closer and he forgets how to breathe. Her lips are soft — so soft — and they taste of vanilla chap-stick and Doritos. He thinks it might be his favourite flavour in the whole world.

His hands lay redundantly on his lap, forgotten, but her hands are awake and they slide into his hair on either side of his head as she angles his face towards her. He lets it happen, thinking that he must be lost in some bittersweet dream. It makes perfect sense that his depraved mind would concoct a scenario in which he has to feel guilty for enjoying the kiss of the only woman he’s ever loved.

Because he does love Rey. Hopelessly. He has for almost the whole time he’s known her. He’s pretty sure it started at some point over the second beer that first day, while she’d been waxing lyrical about Galaxy Wars’ seamless integration of practical effects and CGI in her favourite space battle of Season Two. He’s tried to tell her how he feels about a million times since then, but he’s a coward and he’s never been able to find the right words. He’s not sure the right words exist. How is he supposed to tell his best friend that their whole relationship has been a lie? That the whole time, he’s been holding something back from her?

But now there’s no room for words, not with the way her tongue is pressing against the seam of his lips, or the way they part to let her inside. And if this is a dream, it’s the most realistic dream in the world because he can _feel_ her breath mingling with his and he can _feel_ the desperate longing bubbling up inside him, rousing his dormant hands and guiding them to her sides. It’s the most real thing he’s felt all day. All year. All his life, really.

It’s vaguely terrifying, and Ben’s hands tense against her waist, preparing to call a halt to it all. Rey’s body shifts in response, her knee slithering across his thighs until she can straddle his legs and slot herself against his torso.

“Don’t be afraid,” she murmurs into his mouth. “I feel it too.”

The words are like a balm to his racing mind and at once he relaxes against her, his hands sliding around her to span her back. She feels so narrow under his touch, and he spreads his fingers wide to touch as much of her as he can at once. She seems to like that as she gives a little wriggle, breathing appreciative noises into his mouth.

He knows, deep down, that this is just Rey’s way of trying to make him feel better, to beat away the numbness and help him forget the reason for the heavy lump in the pit of his stomach. This is how she deals with things, not with words but with actions. She throws her weight behind problems until they’re trampled underfoot. As sharp as he knows her mind to be, she’s all physicality; always moving, never still. He’d said he wanted to forget, so she’s making him forget. He’d said he needed to feel, so she’s making him feel.

It’s a stupid strategy — as reckless as any she’s ever had because this time it’s their friendship on the line — and Ben knows it’s his role to slow her down, make her think, make her _stop_ , but he just can’t find it in himself to do it. He wants this. He wants her. He knows it’s wrong of him to take what she’s offering him in good faith when he feels so much _more_ for her than she could possibly know, but Lord knows no one ever said he was _good_. If he was good, he would have stayed at his parents’ house that afternoon when they’d told him to, “Go on. You have plans. We’ll be fine. Say ‘hello’ to Rey for us.” If he was good, he would have left his last sentence at, “Don't—” and soothed the sting with, “You’re my best friend and I would never take advantage of you like that”. But he hadn’t. And now Rey’s fingers are sliding down to the hem of his dark green henley, curling beneath it and _tugging_ , and all he can focus on are the shivers she sends racing through him as he lets her pull it up and off over his head.

Her shirt quickly joins his on the floor and suddenly his fingertips are running over skin, not fabric, interrupted only by the band of her bra. Her hands leave his chest, where her hot palms had been smoothing circles into his fevered skin, and he feels her reach back. He breathes a mental sigh of relief when the bra comes loose under her practiced fingers and he helps her peel it off her shoulders before she tosses it to one side.

Her fingers find a new home then, buried in the hair at the nape of his neck, and he can feel her breasts against his chest when she leans in to capture his mouth again. They’re soft and supple, peaked with hard, little nubs that birth tingles on the surface of his skin wherever they touch. One hand leaves the safety of her back to slip between them and soon the swell of her right breast is cupped neatly in his palm. He kneads gently, experimentally, and she makes a low noise of approval against his mouth. It’s like no sound he’s ever heard her make before, and yet it’s so _Rey_ that he can’t help but be startled by it.

“Rey, what are we—” he starts, his hand frozen against her, stillness flooding his body as the weight of the situation hits him.

“Don’t think,” comes the reply, complete with a graze of teeth against his lower lip. “Just feel.”

Her hand moves to cover his and she’s squeezing, and he’s squeezing with her, and then it’s just him because her fingers are slipping down his torso to find the waistband of his black jeans. Her body curls, putting space between their bodies, and Ben’s hand draws back slightly until his fingertips find her nipple. He knows he should stop, knows that he _should_ think, despite what Rey says, but he finds he doesn’t want to — not when she’s making that mewling sound and pressing her chest into his touch. His other hand joins its pair between them, his thumb smoothing over the little peak it finds there. He’s dreamed about these breasts, small but perfectly formed, like dewdrops glinting on the delicate silk of a spider’s web in the early morning — precious and rare. Something to be cherished. Ben wants to cherish them now.

His own back curves as his lips break away from her mouth. They move down her neck and across her collarbones, down the line of her sternum, until they can close over one dusky pink nipple, the tip of his tongue swirling around the proud, little nub. He hears the sharp intake of breath which accompanies the rise of Rey’s chest. It pushes her deeper into his waiting mouth and he finds himself suckling, lapping, smoothing, swirling, serenaded by a steady stream of soft noises from above that set his blood on fire.

Rey’s hands have stilled against his stomach, her fingers splayed across his abdomen as though to steady herself, and they stay there as his mouth wanders to her other breast. Eventually, though, they start to move again, deftly unfastening the button of his jeans and easing down the zipper before one is pushed beneath to palm him through the thin, stretch-cotton of his boxer briefs. The sensation sends a little shockwave through him and he sucks in a sharp breath against her nipple, his teeth grazing the delicate skin, which in turn seems to prompt her fingers to tighten around the rock-hard length of him. He groans and lifts his face to look up at her, his eyebrows drawn together in an almost pained expression. She doesn’t give him time to protest, just slants her mouth across his, running her free hand up the length of his body to hook around his neck as the other begins to stroke.

Ben’s fevered mind can’t decide which sensation to focus on, the heat of her tongue against his, the pressure of her fingers around his aching cock or the sweet caress of her nipples against his chest. He’s forgotten how to move his hands again and they’re curled aimlessly around her ribcage as she floods his body with tingles. Soon, though, she’s wriggling away from him and he opens his eyes in panic, every inch of him crying out for her not to leave him.

She doesn’t go far, just slips down off the couch to kneel between his legs, her fingers snagging under the waistbands of his jeans and underwear. She glances up at him, giving an encouraging little nod, and Ben obeys her unspoken command, lifting his hips so she can pull the layers of fabric down to his thighs. His cock springs free and he almost feels embarrassed by how hard it is, jutting up against his stomach, the tip flushed a deep pink. Its weeping in its need for Rey’s touch, begging her to save it from the abuse its suffered at his hands over the years he couldn’t have her, and she seems to take pity on it, wrapping her long, slim fingers around the base of the shaft and leaning in to press a soothing kiss to the head. Ben lets out a strangled breath, his hands grasping up fistfuls of brown couch at either side of his thighs as he watches the incredible scene play out below.

This is Rey. _Rey_. His Rey. And she’s _touching him_ , kissing him, letting her tongue run along the underside of him, taking him into her mouth and _sucking_. The dark part of his mind wonders whether _he’s_ the one who’s dying and this is just his brain’s way of conjuring some kind of peace in his last moments.

As though lifted on a current of air, independent of thought, his hand floats up to rest against Rey’s silky hair, his fingers slipping through the chestnut strands close to the place where they’re scooped back into a messy bun. Rey seems to take this as a good sign and bobs down further over him, taking him deeper into her mouth before pulling back up again to swirl her tongue around his sensitive glans. Ben is lost. He’s never felt anything like this before. He’s not completely inexperienced in this area — there have been other girls, mostly in the time he thinks of as ‘before’ — but this is _Rey_. He can’t explain why it’s so different with her but it is. She makes him feel alive, brimming with something warm and comforting and exciting. God, she makes him _feel_.

It’s too much.

Her hands are resting on the tops of his thighs as her head bobs up and down and he takes them now, pulling her up towards him. She comes away from him with a lewd, little pop and grins at him, eyes sparkling. She’s incredible.

She doesn’t come to him, though. After pressing a soft kiss to his stunned mouth, she stands up and shimmies out of the jeans she’s wearing. Ben gets a quick glimpse of washed-out, white underwear before those, too, are rolling away down her long, tanned legs. His breath catches in his throat as his gaze travels up the length of her, snagging hungrily on the patch of short, soft-looking, dark curls at the apex of her thighs before continuing upwards to drink in the rest of her. When it reaches her face, he realises there’s a bashful colour playing over her cheekbones, but if she’s shy she doesn’t let it stop her because, before he knows it, she’s clambering back onto his lap and wrapping her arms tightly around his neck as leverage for a deep, searching kiss.

His hands slip around her, following the sensual curve of her ass with his palms, and he groans softly as she starts to wriggle against him, skin on skin. His cock is trapped between them and she presses her hips forward to grind against it, giving him no quarter as he clings to her for dear life. There’s a delicious heat concentrated at the place where her legs are spread around him and as she hauls herself up against him he feels the length of his shaft gliding through slick folds. She’s wet, he realises. For him. His heart stutters in his chest, his fingers tensing against her cheeks, and she pulls back slightly to look down at him.

“Do you want to?” she asks, and the determined press of her toned body against his belies the tone of surprising vulnerability in her low, rich voice.

He gives a tremulous nod, because he’s never wanted anything as much in his life, and breathes, “Yes.”

She smiles, looking relieved, and holds his gaze for a moment longer while her fingers smooth his dark hair back from his face, then she lowers her mouth back to his and kisses him with a sweetness which doesn’t quite match up with the salacious way her hips start to move against him, coating his cock in her slick warmth.

He should touch her, pleasure her, make her feel as amazing as she is making him feel. Not that he thinks he would be much good at it. Most of his sexual experience comes from fumbling, hurried encounters, full of clacking teeth and mumbled apologies in the dark, in the time before Rey, but he’s not a complete imbecile. He’s seen porn. He knows what’s supposed to feel good. He knows he can use his hands and his mouth — both, even — and he’s in the middle of formulating a sensible, solid plan for how to actually go about implementing this idea of his, when Rey lifts herself up a little higher than before and he feels the head of his cock catch at her entrance.

He sucks in a gasp against her mouth and he thinks he feels her do the same, then she’s sinking down onto him and it’s all he can do to hold onto her and remember how to breathe. She’s warm and tight and velvety soft and _tight_. Fuck, she’s so tight.

And she’s _Rey_.

His face tips forwards until his forehead is pressed to hers, his eyes fluttering shut as she starts to move, and his hands slide up her sides to encase her ribcage. Her pace is slow at first, tentative, as though she’s learning him, and he can feel every torturous slide as he slips out of her, only to be buried deep again each time she falls against him.

He hears a soft little, “Oh,” whispered into the space between their mouths and he leans in to capture it with his lips, sharing the sentiment behind it.

They kiss for a long time then, riding the waves of sensation together that pass through them as their bodies mould to each other. Rey’s mouth against his keeps him grounded as her pace picks up and his hips begin to move to meet hers. Her lips are his guide when he finally lifts her into his arms and deposits her beneath him on the couch, each thrust becoming somehow deeper and more desperate. Her fevered kisses help him hold on when he feels her hand snake between them to anxiously find her clit. Her whimpered cries of “yes,” and “please, Ben,” and “I want you to”, spoken into his flesh as her cunt clenches and flutters around him, reassure him that it’s time for him to finally let go. And, afterwards, the slow and languid caress of her mouth against his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, are like a balm to his quivering soul.

“Rey…” he breathes when his cheek comes to rest above her heart, and he _feels_ rather than sees her smile as her fingers card through his hair.

“I know.”

~

Inside, David Bowie’s “Heroes” is playing. Outside, Ben stands with his mother and Luke, robotically thanking the stream of people who are filing out of the funeral home.

They hadn’t left through the double doors at the back of the room, the ones they’d come in through. Instead, the attendants had led them out through a side door at the front, past the coffin on its dais and into an antechamber, where all the flowers had been laid out and the cloying scent of cut blooms overwhelmed the senses. The antechamber, in turn, led back onto the entrance hall and then, blessedly, outside. Ben had tried to cast a last furtive glance towards the back row of seats before he had been ushered away from the guests, but he hadn’t been able to make her out any more clearly then than he had before.

Now, he cranes his neck along the line of people that are filing down the funeral home’s white-painted steps, trying to see her. He can’t. Not yet. Not around the heads of the people waiting to shake his hand and tell him how very sorry they are, what a nice service it had been and how much Han would have liked it. The guests must have followed the family out past the coffin because, for the first few dozen handshakes, Ben only recognises people who’d been in the front few rows. Gradually, though, he begins to see more unfamiliar faces — people who hadn’t classed themselves as close enough to Han to claim too high a place in the unwritten hierarchy of the funeral seating layout.

Next to Leia, between her and Ben, a tall, square-shouldered man has stopped to speak earnestly to Luke and is holding up the flow of traffic. A clot of people forms at the top of the steps, and Ben thinks he sees a glimpse of a messy, chestnut chignon in the midst of the crowd before the canny person he’d just shaken hands with makes the wise decision to step around the offender, and Ben’s hand is occupied once more.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Your mom must be really glad to have you around at a time like this.”

“It was a lovely ceremony.”

“Those song choices were so _Han_.”

Ben replies to each comment with a polite nod, a pre-practiced reply or a forced smile, whichever seems most appropriate, until—

“Ben.”

A shiver runs through him because he _knows_ that voice. He turns his head towards her as the person he’d just been thanking moves on to greet his mother, and she’s really there, all big, hazel eyes, and soft, pink mouth, and tear-stained cheeks, and Ben’s first instinct is to wrap his arms around her and never let her go again. But he can’t because there’s something in the way.

He looks down then, dazedly taking in the rest of her. His gaze snags on her black duffle coat — the only smart coat she owns, he remembers her telling him a long time ago — and the way she now wears it gapped down the front despite the cold air. It’s obviously to accommodate for the swell of her very large, very pregnant belly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)! 
> 
> ~
> 
> All aboard the pain train! Choo choo!
> 
> I apologise in advance because, wow, angst! But this fic is like the night time: it's always darkest before the dawn. Stay with me and I promise I'll make it all better as soon as possible. <3
> 
> Also, I've upped the chapter count to six, because I wasn't planning on there being so much angst to heal from. I've got a lot of making up to do.
> 
> * * *

Before the funeral, he felt numb. Now, standing in his mother’s kitchen next to the six saucepans full of gifted chilli con carne and the veritable fishbowl full of Maz Kanata’s famous punch (a favourite of his dad), he just feels confused and more than a little bit panicky. He keeps replaying the scene over in his head, just to make sure he has all the details right.

Rey stands in front of him, her hands pushed deep into the pockets of her duffel coat and her shoulders hunched against the cold breeze that nips through the branches of the bare trees which line the street outside the funeral home. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, as though she has just cried through most of the service, and her nose looks freshly blown. And, of course, she’s pregnant.

(This is the bit Ben keeps feeling the need to double check, to make sure he hasn’t imagined it.)

Rey must notice him staring at her belly, where it thrusts out proud of her coat, because when he looks back at her face she presses her lips together in a sad, little smile.

“How are you doing?” she asks and Ben feels the sudden desire to laugh. Wholly inappropriate for the situation, he knows, so he manages to hold it in, just about. The noise that does escape sounds more like a choked grunt.

“I was going to call you,” she carries on, seeming to understand his sudden inability to form words. “But I thought it might just make everything worse.”

“Why?” Ben blurts before he can stop himself.

“Well, because of…” She trails off, a little wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “I thought you might just need some time to focus on family,” she supplies eventually, with a little shrug. Ben isn’t sure why it stings so much to hear her say that.

No, actually, he does. It stings because there was a time when Ben considered her like family, closer than family, and he’d thought she felt the same way. Of course, that had been before… It stings because he realises now that he’s been holding onto hope — against the odds — that they’ll be able to find their way back to that one day. It stings because he realises now that they won’t.

He’s been quiet too long. A few of the last remaining people have slipped around Rey to offer their condolences to Leia and shake hands with Luke, and above them, on the funeral home porch, someone is closing the front doors against the winter chill. Both of them turn their heads to watch.

“Anyway,” she sighs, looking back up at him. “You’ve got things you need to do, I’m sure.” She pulls her coat a little tighter around her and crosses her arms over her chest, on top of the bump. Probably to stop him staring.

“I—” Ben begins but Rey cuts him off.

“I’ll see you back at your mum’s.” A little trickle of relief washes through him. He’s not ready for her to walk back out of his life again so soon. At least this gives him a little while to get his thoughts in order and remember how to have a conversation again before he loses her for good. He nods quickly in response and she smiles again as she starts to move away, still with that same, sad look in her eyes. He remembers guiltily how they used to shine when she smiled, before he went and fucked it all up.

~

The smell of sex and sweat hangs heavy in the air. Rey’s arm is draped over Ben’s broad shoulders, her cheek resting against the top of his head, while he lays with his ear pressed to the centre of her chest, listening to the pounding of her heart. He doesn’t want to let her go. Not ever. He’d never bargained on this happening and he doesn’t think he’s entirely prepared to explore what it _means_ but it has to mean _something_. People don’t have sex _that_ intense with just anyone, certainly not someone they only want to be friends with. Do they? And how on earth is he supposed to broach the subject? Should he do it now, or should he wait until they’re dressed again?

_Fuck._

Ben feels woefully out of his depth.

“What are you thinking?”

As though she can sense his restless thoughts, Rey lifts a hand to gently encourage his chin up towards her. He lets it rest against her sternum as he meets her gaze, his tongue passing over his dry lips before replying, “Just… everything.”

Rey’s fingers trail lightly over his shoulder and down his bicep, sending fresh waves of shivers through his body. It’s incredible how _alive_ she makes him feel, when only an hour ago he felt like some kind of zombie.

“Your dad?”

Ben’s eyebrows rise. He isn’t really sure what he’s thinking, but it certainly isn’t about Han Solo. The realisation lodges a shard of guilt somewhere in his chest and, dammit, he can feel that too, just as clearly as the fingertips tracing his skin.

“Actually, I was thinking about us,” he ventures, trying to reclaim the glow of a moment before by reaching up with his free hand to brush some of the damp, wispy hairs away from her face.

“Us?” She looks at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes and it’s equal parts endearing and terrifying. _Shit_. Where does he go with this?

“You can’t be surprised by that,” he says, attempting humour with the way he looks pointedly down at where their bodies are still entwined together like interwoven vines. She, thankfully, smiles back, her eyes sparkling, and buries her face in the couch cushion beside her to hide the way her cheeks flush red. His own face feels hot too and he nuzzles his nose against her warm, clammy skin, trying to get a handle on the grin that’s threatening to break out across his face.

“No, I suppose I’m not.”

He feels Rey look back down at him and he meets her eye, forcing his mouth to relax into a more composed-looking expression.

“I just thought you might want to talk about everything else a bit more, now…” She trails off, looking uncertain, and he wonders what she had been going to say. Now what? Now that they’ve both orgasmed? He doesn’t see how that changes anything, except that it changes _everything_ , but only for them. Everything else outside these four walls is the same as it had been when he’d come in here and if he thinks about it now, with the way she’s kick-started all these feelings and emotions swirling inside him, he’ll crumble.

“No, I don’t,” he replies, the hand at her shoulder trailing down the side of her torso, where it’s squashed beneath his chest, until he can trace the underside of her breast with his thumb. He’d kissed her there earlier. He thinks about that instead.

She’s quiet for a long while and Ben thinks she must be content to let the subject lie, to just enjoy the way his fingers trace circles on her skin, as much as he’s enjoying feeling her body against him, beneath him. Eventually, though, she breaks the silence.

“You should, you know.” There’s a pause and Ben feels a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realises that she hasn’t dropped the topic at all, has just been trying to think of another way to approach it. “Talk about it.”

A wrinkle of irritation forms somewhere at the back of his mind at the loss of the blissful sense of calm which she’d bestowed on him only to snatch away with this turn in the conversation.

“What is there to talk about?” he asks, acquainting his gaze with the threadbare covering of her couch. “There’s nothing I can do to change any of it.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything at all. You don’t have to feel so helpless.” She’s so determined. It’s one of the things he loves about her. It’s biting him on the ass now.

He sighs and tries to curl himself around her, tries to hold on for just a little while longer. “Rey, please, I’d rather not do this right now.”

He should have known it wouldn’t work. Once Rey has an idea in her head, she rarely lets go of it. He feels her shimmy up slightly on the couch, out of his grasp, so he has to push himself up on his forearms to meet her eye. Her expression is equal parts compassion and stubborn intention.

“You shouldn’t hide from it.”

Ben snorts. He can’t help it. It’s just so preposterous a statement coming from Rey. She’s the absolute queen of denial. If anything makes her feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable, she clams up, shuts down, changes the subject, sometimes for months. She wouldn’t let them watch the last episode of Game of Thrones for three weeks after it aired because it would have meant admitting it was over. Ben had been thoroughly spoiled on a number of key outcomes by the time she’d finally relented and, even then, with the title sequence paused on the screen, he’d had to threaten her with the withholding of snacks if she didn’t stop pretending the dishes needed drying and get her ass on the couch to watch it with him.

He’s found urgent letters from her bank — unopened and ignored — shoved down the back of couch cushions when he’s been searching for a missing phone. He remembers driving her to college just ten minutes before the submission deadline for her Undergraduate Thesis because she’d been wilfully ignoring it until the last possible moment. And her iPhone… The number of little, red notification bubbles that litter her home screen make Ben’s eye twitch.

Snorting was apparently the wrong thing to do, however, as Rey’s hands withdraw from his skin. She crosses her arms over her breasts instead and fixes him with a hard stare.

“I mean it. I know I do it too, but that’s how I know it isn’t helpful in the long run.” Her tone is firm but still surprisingly gentle and it makes Ben’s stomach twist uncomfortably. He knows why. It’s the kind of thing he would say to her.

“You have to face your fears,” she carries on, “even if it’s hard.” As he watches with a frown, her face softens and one hand slips back down to caress his cheek. “You taught me that.”

The tenderness of the action stills Ben’s heart and there’s something about the way she’s looking at him that makes him think that maybe—

Just maybe—

“Okay,” he says softly, his mouth growing dry as he gazes up at her.

This is it. This is the moment he’s been waiting for. He has to tell her. She said he needs to stop hiding, face his fears, and he’s been so scared that telling her will mean he’ll lose her but her wide, expressive eyes, that hand against his cheek, her heartbeat thrumming so closely in time with his, all make him think he might have been wrong.

They’ve just had sex, for God’s sake. Amazing, life altering sex. And, okay, so it hadn’t lasted all that long, and he should have done so much more to pleasure her, but they have time now to put that right. He will tell her, and they will have time. And it doesn’t matter what else the world throws at him because he’ll have her and she makes him feel like he can overcome anything.

“Okay, then I want to tell you how I feel about you.”

Rey blinks. Her lips part and Ben watches, his heart in his throat, as a little crease form on her forehead.

“What do you mean?”

Ben’s lips press together as he swallows down five years’ worth of fear and a heart that feels like it’s trying to escape.

“You’re the only good thing in my life—”

“That’s not true,” Rey interrupts, her dazed look turning to one of consternation. She looks like she’s about to say more but Ben doesn’t let her.

“It is.”

If only she knew how he lives from week to week, from the time he saw her last to the time he’ll see her next. If only she knew how his stomach rolls over whenever he sees that there’s a new message from her waiting on his lock screen. If only she knew that he hadn’t visited his family for over a year before she’d convinced him to ask Luke if there were any internships going at his aeronautics company, or that her infectious enthusiasm for planes had been the thing that got him reminiscing with his dad about the good times they’d shared in the Falcon, or that he’s been mad at his mom ever since she used her contacts to secure Rey the job in Coruscant which is going to take her away from him in a month’s time. She is the sunlight that brightens his darkest days. She’s the warmth that thaws his frosty demeanour. She’s the only reason any of their mutual friends still put up with him. She means the world to him and it’s time he grew some balls and admitted it.

“Rey, I want you to be with me.” His eyes are intense on hers, not giving her anywhere to hide, and because of that he has a front row seat as her wide-eyed, shocked stare begins to close in on itself. He can practically _see_ her walls coming up and he swears he can feel his heart breaking.

“You’re grieving,” she says, calmly, practically. “We can talk about this another time.”

“No, I want to talk about it now.” He feels desperate, like he’s trying to hold onto a handful of sand as it slips away through the cracks in his fingers. “I want us to be together. We can be together, just you and me. We don’t need anyone else. I can move to Coruscant with you and—” He reaches for her hands but she shies away and wriggles out from beneath him, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“Ben, don’t do this. Don’t go this way.” Her voice is quiet when she speaks, disappointed, _scared_ , and he swears it cuts through flesh and bone down to the deepest part of him. She shakes her head and turns, leaning over the edge of the couch for her bra and panties, saying, “It’s only going to end up with both of us getting hurt.”

“No,” he says, and when she stands to pull on her underwear without looking at him, “No! You’re not listening!”

She whirls, her hands dropping from behind her back where she’s just fastened her bra. “No, _you’re_ not listening. This isn’t the time for this.”

She must see the anguished expression on his face, as he kneels pathetically on her couch, his pants and boxers around his ankles, caught on his Air Jordans, next to a fresh but rapidly cooling cum stain, because she sinks back down to sit beside him again, wringing her hands in her lap.

“I understand you coming here tonight, I really do, and I wanted to make you feel better, but…” She draws in a deep breath. “This is a time for _family_ , not— whatever this is.”

Ben is bleeding. He must be. He can feel the life ebbing out of him through the wound her words have gouged in him. Family. She _is_ his family. Maybe not by blood but he’s closer to her than he’s ever been to any of his blood relatives. He’s closer to her than he is to anyone. And—

And he’d thought she felt the same.

Even if she didn’t ‘feel the same’, the same way he feels about her, he thought they were on the same page about _this_.

God, it hurts.

“What would you know about family?” he asks caustically, lashing out in the only way he knows will make her hurt the way he’s hurting, using her childhood in foster care as a whip to flay her with. It’s cheap and petty. It’s beneath him, and God knows it’s not what she deserves. But it feels like a kind of victory, albeit a hollow one. He turns away from her stunned silence and rises to his feet, pulling his pants up as he goes.

When she speaks behind him, her voice sounds small. “I know what it feels like to lose a parent.”

He stoops, scooping up his henley and wrestling it angrily down over his head.

“No, you don’t. Your parents threw you away like garbage.”

“They didn’t!”

“They did,” he snarls as he spins around to attack, every inch the wounded animal. “But you can’t stop needing them. It’s your greatest weakness.”

He can feel that his face is hot and twisted as the tension of the day finally breaks free unchecked, and he realises he _is_ angry at her. He’s angry that it’s so easy for people to like her. He’s angry that she can find something to talk about with anyone: planes, baseball, Z-fighters. Hell, she even had an hour long conversation with his mother about tea once! He’s angry that she finds it all so much easier than he does. He’s angry that she had the correct reaction when he’d told her about his dad’s cancer. He’s just so fucking angry!

“You look for them everywhere, in my dad, my mom, in Luke. The way you hover around my family, it’s pathetic and it’s really fucking transparent. You have to move on, Rey.” He growls her name and he finds he _hates_ the way it sounds on his lips like that. “You have to let the past die.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?” Rey says, bristling as she stands up to face him, and she may just be wearing underwear but that doesn’t make her any less impressive because the heat in her eyes is intimidating. “Just let your dad die while you hide in Coruscant with me?”

Ben takes a step back. “I’m not trying to hide!”

“It looks like you’re hiding to me,” she counters, stepping into her jeans and hoisting them up over her legs. “Han needs you.” She grabs her shirt and points a finger at him menacingly. “He and Leia both do. They’re going to need all of us before this is over.”

“All of us?” The numbness is setting in again; the anger slips away from him as he watches her shirt descending over her torso, as though a lid is being shut on the pool of emotion she’d briefly stirred up in him. It leaves him feeling… nothing.

“Yes. All of us. You, me, Luke—”

His brow furrows and when he interrupts her his voice is quiet.

“You have no place in this story.”

“Ben?” She looks up at him as though he’s slapped her. He can’t find it within himself to care anymore.

“You can stop pretending to be part of my family now.”

“Ben…” Her hazel eyes grow wide and he can see the glassy shimmer of tears welling up in their corners.

He turns away before he can see them fall. “It’s not like there will _be_ a family for much longer anyway.”

The silence stretches on for an eternity. Ben’s throat feels tight, his shoulders feel heavy and his heart has sunk down to languish somewhere deep and dark inside of him. Eventually, though, it becomes too much.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs and he’s ashamed to hear how surly he still sounds.

“No, I’m sorry,” Rey replies. She sounds tired. The fire has left her voice. He hears the springs of the couch creak slightly and he turns his head to watch as she sinks down onto it, perching on the edge as though she’s trying to avoid the place where he’d held her only a few minutes before. “You’re right. I _don’t_ understand what your family’s going through, what _you’re_ going through.”

Ben swallows. He should feel vindicated but he doesn’t. If he’s won this argument, it’s an empty victory. He certainly doesn’t _feel_ like he’s won anything.

He sighs and looks down at his feet. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. I’m fine.” He glances up at her to check and… he can’t tell. Her face is blank. It’s like she’s closed herself off from him, or perhaps _he’s_ closed _himself_ off from the place that used to be able to sense what she was thinking. “You probably should get going though,” she says after a moment. “It’s late.”

It’s not. It can only be about half past nine and he’d normally stay until gone ten but he can’t find the strength to argue.

“Yeah.”

It takes him a minute, maybe two, to gather up his things from where he’d left them: wallet, phone, keys, jacket. He stops when he has them all and looks back at Rey. She’s still sitting on the sofa, staring blankly at the paused frame of the Galaxy Wars opening crawl. He chews at the inside of his lip, trying to decide if he should say something, anything, to try to make this better, but what can he say? He’s said enough.

With a bitter taste in his mouth, he turns and heads for the apartment door.

“Wait!”

He turns and watches as Rey scoops the untouched bags of chips up from the coffee table.

“Do you want to take the Doritos home with you?”

It’s an unwritten rule; he always provides the snacks and Rey always provides the kind of companionship and understanding that only Rey can.

He guesses that’s over now.

“No. I bought them for you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)!
> 
> * * *
> 
> **TW: This chapter briefly discusses the final few months of the life of someone with brain cancer. If you're likely to find this upsetting, please stop reading at the first tilde (~) and pick up again at the second.**
> 
> This is just a little bite-sized chapter to tide you over while I work on the biggie - Chapter 5. I hope you like!
> 
> * * *

March. He’d found out about his dad’s cancer in March. Rey had moved away at the beginning of April. May. June. July. August. September. October. It’s November now. Some of the houses they’d passed on the way back from the funeral home still have their Halloween decorations up.

Someone squeezes past where Ben is sitting perched at the bottom of the stairs, murmuring an apology as they go. It makes him lose count. He starts again, holding his two hands out in front of him.

April. May. June. He puts one finger up for every month he checks off. July. August. September. October. November...

Eight months. It’s been eight months since he had sex with Rey on the creaky, old, threadbare couch in her apartment before calling her garbage and telling her she had no part in his family’s story.

And now she’s pregnant. _Very_ pregnant. The bump is even more pronounced now that she’s taken her coat off. The black dress that she’d been wearing underneath is simple and plain, with a high neckline and long sleeves. Its hem ends about two inches above her knees, over the opaque, black tights which show off her long legs and draw attention to her chunky, black combat boots. The fabric of the dress is stretchy and it _clings_ to her, accentuating every curve. It makes the bump unmissable.

She’d arrived about ten minutes ago. Ben had watched as she’d come inside and hung her coat up on the heaving coat stand before looking around the crowded entrance hall for someone to talk to. That should have been when he’d got up and walked over to her, but he’d been very preoccupied with counting at that particular moment. Now she’s standing near the archway that leads into the living room, chatting solemnly with one man Ben doesn’t recognise and another who looks kind of familiar — something to do with his mother, he thinks.

Eight months. It’s possible.

It’s more than possible. They hadn’t used protection. The condom Ben kept in his wallet had still been there when he’d left the apartment after their argument. In fact, it’s still there now. He doesn’t know why he’s never thought about it before.

 _Fuck_.

What does he do? What does he say?

Why didn’t she _tell_ him? Does she really hate him so much that she couldn’t stand the thought of having him involved in his child’s life?

His child’s life.

A wave of nausea washes over him. He can’t have a child. Hell, he’s hardly been able to function himself for the past eight months. He’s been a phantom, drifting along while life happens around him. He only vaguely remembers driving his parents to the hospital in Chandrila for radiotherapy appointments back in the spring, and he’s loosely aware that, at some point, the appointments stopped.

He remembers his mother’s insistence that they carry on their monthly lunches, even when his dad had been unable to sit up at the table any longer. There had only been two like that, perched around his dad’s bed with their lunches balanced on trays, before Han had stopped eating food altogether.

He remembers the seizures and the speech loss that had plagued the time towards the end. He remembers the way his dad’s smile had stopped bearing any resemblance to the one belonging to the man in the photograph with Chewie.

He remembers the phone call he’d received at work, telling him he needed to get to the hospital, fast. He remembers being too late.

He remembers it all, but it feels like it belongs to someone else. It’s as if he’s been looking in on his own life through a window, blocked off from all the emotion that goes with normal, human existence. The last thing he really remembers _experiencing_ was the sudden stab of panic that had spurred him to rush to Rey’s apartment the morning she’d left for Coruscant. Perhaps if he’d just caught her—

Perhaps if he’d arrived on time—

But he hadn’t, and since then he’s been a hollow shell.

Fuck, it’s no wonder she didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have told him either. What would he have done if she had? Probably exactly what he’s doing right now, what he did throughout the funeral service, what he did throughout his dad’s illness: stare blankly and silently at the floor, no use to anyone.

~

Someone behind him beeps and he realises he’s still sitting at the stop sign, even though no traffic has passed for a while now, not since Rey’s Jeep had rattled down her street, headed in the direction of the highway that will take her all the way to Coruscant. He pulls around the corner and stops his car outside her apartment. Except it’s not her apartment any more. It’s empty now, save for a bunch of memories that don’t mean anything to anyone any more.

No, that’s not true. They still mean something to him. He just wishes he’d arrived in time to tell her.

Oh, screw that. He still can tell her! He reaches for his phone on the passenger seat and opens his message history with Rey.

It’s easy to see when their argument was: the thirteenth of March. There are hundreds of messages from before that date. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. They stretch back further than Ben can scroll. Silly messages, serious messages, messages to check in, messages to organise meeting up, messages with funny pictures of cats, messages with funny pictures of Rey, messages with funny pictures of Ben (although he usually hadn’t intended them to be funny when he’d taken them), messages to say goodnight, and some messages just to say ‘hi’.

Since that date, though, there have been exactly sixteen messages exchanged.

**_Mon 21 Mar_ ** _,_ _10:23_

_Have you watched any more of Galaxy Wars?_

  
_Yeah_

  
_Oh, cool. What did you think of the finale?_

_It was okay, I guess. You?_

  
_I haven’t seen it yet. Gonna watch tonight._

**_Fri 1 Apr,_ ** _18:38_

_What time are you leaving tomorrow?_

_The removal van’s coming at 7AM._

_Gonna try to be out of here by midday._

_Do you need any help?_

  
_No, it’s fine. I paid some guys to do the heavy lifting for me._

_Maybe I could drop by about 11 to say goodbye_

_Maybe. Although it’s probably going to be_

_busy here and I’ve barely even started packing_

_yet so it might be a mad dash at the last minute._

_I’ll text you in the morning?_

**_Sat 2 Apr_ ** _, 10:54_

_It’s pretty mad here. We should probably just_

_say goodbye on here._

_Oh, sure. Okay._

  
_I can get in touch when I get settled in and everything._

_Yeah, makes sense. Bye Rey_

  
_Bye Ben x_

Sixteen messages. After five years of friendship.

And they weren’t even all the truth. He hadn’t watched Galaxy Wars, not the episode they’d been going to watch on the night of the argument, nor the finale. He doesn’t really know why he’d said he had. He thinks maybe he was afraid that _she’d_ say that _she_ had and his heart would break a little bit more.

But she _hadn’t_ watched it, and although he’d been too much of a coward to ask if she wanted to, with him, he’d thought that maybe, if he helped her move, if he came to see her off, they might have been able to patch things up. He could have suggested visiting her in Coruscant. He could have offered to keep her company on the drive. He could have helped her set up her new apartment. He could have... done all the things he’d planned to do before he’d gone and hurt the one person he cares about most in the world in the worst possible way.

God, he must have been delusional. Of course she doesn’t want to see him.

With a sigh, he drops his phone back down on the passenger seat.

~

“Your mother wants you.”

The voice startles Ben out of his thoughts and he looks up, closing his eight outstretched fingers and letting his hands fall to his lap.

“What?”

Connix, the council administrator, is standing beside the newel post, looking thoroughly unimpressed. He wonders briefly whether she’s just that kind of person or whether she saves that expression solely for him.

“Your mother asked if you’d join her in the lounge. People have been asking after you.”

Of course they have. He’s been avoiding talking to people since arriving back at the house, making excuses, slipping away before anyone can launch into anything that even closely resembles a conversation, hiding on the stairs. Still, it’s time he stopped hiding, and if he’s got to go into the lounge, he’s decided he’s going to stop on the way and finally talk to—

She’s gone.

Ben sits up straight, panic flooding his brain as he peers over the bannister and Connix’s sandy head to look around the hallway, searching for any sight of a loose, chestnut chignon. She was standing in the doorway, talking to those two men, and now they’re there and she’s not.

“Who are you looking for?” the young clerk asks, her eyes narrowing slightly as she, too, turns to look at the people milling around.

“Rey,” Ben says immediately, rising to his feet to get a better view. When he notices that Connix is looking at him blankly, he elaborates, “The pregnant woman. She was right there.”

“Oh,” she says, catching on. “She left.”

“What?!”

“I saw her pick up her coat and head out front as I was walking over.”

No. _No_ , not again. A thrill of fear and regret and longing rushes through him and it’s so acute it makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, the first thing to have cut through the numbness in months.

He can’t let this happen again. He was a coward before. He’s been a coward today. It’s got to stop. He has someone else to think about now.

He takes the two steps at the bottom of the stairs in one leap, barging past an indignant Connix on his way towards the front door.

“What about your mom?” she calls after him, but Ben can’t spare the time it would take to reply.

There are people everywhere — a moving assault course of ladies from the church in their big, stupid hats, honourable members of the council, people from the airfield, who Ben hasn’t seen since he was a kid, and old hands from the haulage company his dad did the occasional bit of work for — and it seems like they all want to stop what they’re doing to talk to him. Right now. It’s the worst possible timing, and he knows he raises a few eyebrows as he barges past people, but if he lets Rey go now he might as well give up on her altogether — not just her, but their child too, the future he’d once wished they could have — and he’s not going to do that. Not this time. This is his opportunity to make things right and he’s going to take it.

At last, he dodges the last of his mother’s friends with the politest “Thank you for coming, Judge Mothma; if you’ll just excuse me” he can manage, and barrels out onto the porch, his chest heaving.

The cold, November air stings his lungs as he stands at the top of the porch steps and scans the deserted driveway.

“No,” he groans, lifting his hands to run through his hair. “No, no, no!”

He’s about to launch himself down the steps and start sprinting towards the street when—

“Ben?”

He spins, and—

She’s there, like a vision, at the far end of the porch next to the ancient swing-seat that Han built for Leia. There are fresh tears sparkling on her cheeks, and her nose is red. Ben doesn’t think he’s seen anything as beautiful in his whole life.

She looks like hope.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)!
> 
> * * *

Rey lifts her hand and hastily wipes her face on the cuff off her coat sleeve, looking a bit startled by Ben’s sudden appearance on the peaceful porch and the urgency which seems to have gripped him as he rushes towards her.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her eyebrows drawn together in concern.

“Don’t leave,” he blurts before he can stop himself.

Rey blinks, confused, before her face softens slightly. “I wasn’t. I’m not. I just..." She takes a deep breath, "needed a bit of air. Hormones,” she explains, biting at her lip and looking vaguely awkward.

Ben feels relief wash over him. He’s fully aware that he's been granted a reprieve and he intends to use it.

“I’m sorry," he says, wasting no time in finally offering the sincere apology he should have delivered eight months ago, because regardless of everything else — the baby, his dad's death, his inability to deal with emotions like a regular human being — Rey meant the world to him, _still_ means the world to him, and even in a life full of being a disappointment, hurting her is the worst thing he's ever done.

"I’m so sorry, for what I said that night at your apartment and for not getting there in time to say goodbye to you, and for not visiting you all these months." She's right in front of him now, close enough for him to see the freckles sprinkled between the lines on her forehead, and it’s just the two of them; his broad shoulders seem to shield them from the rest of the world. "I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could tell me and I’m sorry for being the kind of guy you thought wouldn’t be there for you or—”

“Ben, I’m—” she starts, her frown deepening.

“Just let me finish," he begs, because he knows that 'sorry' alone isn't enough. "Please."

There must be something in his wild-eyed expression or the tremor in his deep voice which speaks to her because, after a breath, she nods.

He lets out a grateful sigh.

"I know what I said that night was unforgivable." His words had been forged out of a knowledge of her weaknesses, which she'd _trusted_ him with, as her friend, and he used them against her in the cruellest stroke. "But…" He feels his heart flutter. "You have this way of always seeing the best in people and I… I just wanted to know if you could still see any hope for me," he finishes lamely. "Us. Our friendship.”

Rey's lips draw into a hard line underneath her frown as she looks down at the porch decking, not meeting his eyes. _Christ_ , he'd known that today would be the hardest day of his life but _this_ , waiting for her to pass judgement on him like this, is the hardest thing he's ever had to endure. Still, he knows it was his words that had gotten him into this mess to begin with, so he has the good sense to just hold his tongue until she decides she's ready to talk, worrying at the openings of his pants pockets while he waits.

Eventually, she looks up at him and says, in a level tone, “I thought our friendship was just me pretending to be part of your family.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he replies abjectly, suitably appalled by the memory.

“Then why did you say it?”

He gulps. “Because I’m an asshole." Rey lifts one straight, slender eyebrow, and she doesn't disagree. "And because," he continues, a deep breath puffing out his chest beneath the white dress shirt and narrow, black tie he's wearing. "It dawned on me that you meant more to me than anyone in my life, _including_ my family, and I thought…” He pauses, his eyes searching her face for any sign that she’s going to let him off the hook here.

She isn't.

“You thought what?”

His tongue flickers out to nervously moisten his lips. “I thought that you didn't feel the same.”

Rey holds his gaze for a long moment, her face all hard lines and an even harder stare, but then he sees something inside her relent and she sighs, “I did.”

“You did?” he asks uncertainly.

“I do,” she corrects softly.

Ben's jaw works as he fights down the sudden, metallic prickling that's making the back of his throat feel tight and thick. He feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, a weight that's been pressing down on him for the last eight months, a weight he's had to carry around with him while he's struggled just to keep his head above water. It's more than he'd been expecting. He thinks it's more than he deserves.

Eventually, he manages to choke out, “Rey…”

She just shakes her head, little dimples forming on her cheeks as she suppresses a fond smile and rolls her eyes at him.

“You’re an absolute walnut," she says. "You know that?”

Ben huffs slightly and sniffs, before looking down at his feet. “I’m a monster.”

“No," she says, "You’re not." Her gentle tone coaxes his gaze back up to her face. "You’re grieving. I think you have been for a while now.”

Ben wishes she was right. He wishes he could blame all this on grief, but his dry eyes throughout the past two weeks have been a dead giveaway. He's not grieving, he's just empty inside, and it wasn't his father's death or Luke's touching eulogy or his mom's efforts to get him to talk about the happy memories that finally brought a lump to his throat. It was Rey telling him that he hadn’t been wrong. How fucking selfish is that?

“I’m not," he admits guiltily. "I don’t feel anything. I haven’t for months, not until I thought you were leaving again.” He presses his lips together in an expression that casts his mouth downwards at the corners, and shakes his head as he turns to look out over the front lawn with its big, old live oak and distant echoes of sunshine and laughter.

He feels a hand brush his arm and he glances down in time to see Rey's hand, with its familiar short, neat nails and simple, gold ring on the middle finger, smoothing out the wrinkles on the sleeve of his black, suit jacket.

“That _is_ grieving, Ben," she says softly from beside him. "There’s no right way to do it."

He wonders if she's right. Of course, he's had the thought before. He's googled 'numb grief' and 'is it normal to feel nothing?' He's scrolled through whole message boards full of posts from people in exactly the same situation as him, but it's never helped assuage his guilt. Somehow, though, it sounds more acceptable coming from Rey.

But that doesn't excuse the way he's acted, does it? The way he let down his dad, the way he's still letting down his mom. God, that fucking Connix girl has been doing a better job of supporting his mom than he has.

He chews his lips, watching the old tire swing swaying slightly in the breeze. “I’ve been doing everything wrong.”

He hears a gentle huff of laughter beside him.

“Well, you haven’t been doing everything _right_ ," Rey agrees, "but—”

“Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

He turns back to face her, trying his hardest to arrange his hangdog expression into something more understanding as he looks down at her bump.

Rey's hands come up over it as if by instinct, her thumbs stroking protectively back and forth, and Ben suddenly _knows_ that, whatever her reasons, her decision had been made in the best interest of their child.

“Honestly, I didn’t know how to," she says quietly, looking down at the place where her duffle coat meets over the top of the bump. "I didn’t think it was the sort of thing you’d want to know about.”

It stings, but Ben can't honestly blame her for thinking that, not after the months of texts going unanswered for days and his half-hearted promises to visit being broken almost as soon as they've been made.

He can only hope she'll believe him when he breathes, “Of course I do.”

She runs her hands down the sides of the bump, then back up the front, her eyes still fixed on the black fabric of her dress.

“You had so much on your plate,” she explains, and now it's her turn to sound slightly guilty.

“I would have made room for this,” he assures her, dipping his head to try to meet her gaze. Her hazel eyes flicker up to his and he can see trepidation there.

“I thought you’d just tell me I was being rash.”

He doesn't blame her for that. It's the way their relationship always used to work; Rey rushed into everything, head first and fists swinging, Ben pulled her back and made her think things through. And, yes, on the surface of things, the idea of her keeping a baby born of a one-night-stand with her former best friend who she is no longer speaking to, in a city she barely knows, miles from the closest thing to a support network she has, is kind of mad. But, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly at all), he understands why she's doing it. He understands because he's felt that same flame of protective decisiveness since the moment he'd lifted his eighth finger. It's terrifying — he still feels vaguely sick at the idea of being a father, especially since he can't even deal with the emotions stirred by the passing of his own father right now — but he understands.

He swallows, shifting his feet slightly, as he squares himself closer to her, making her a promise with his eyes. “Whatever happens from here on out, I want you to know that I’ll support you. Both of you.”

Rey's lips part, her eyes wide and fixed on his, as though held there by the intensity of his gaze, and he thinks for a moment that she looks both touched and taken aback by his sincerity, but then a crease forms between her brows and Ben feels his stomach start to squirm uncomfortably as he watches her confusion turn into a kind of pained understanding.

“Ben," she says slowly, carefully, as though she's talking to a child. "Do you think you’re the father?”

He's pretty sure his heart stops. All he can do is blink and swallow and think about how big and conspicuous he suddenly feels against the old, wooden porch.

“What?”

Rey wrinkles her nose and Ben thinks she looks... cross? “Didn’t Leia tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She sighs, a heart-deep sigh that makes her shoulders, chest and swollen stomach all undulate exaggeratedly.

“Ben… they’re not yours.”

His brain is blank. He's hearing but not comprehending. He's vaguely aware that there's a lot to unpack in the sentence she's just said, even though it only consisted of four words, so he says the first thing that comes to mind.

“They?”

Rey presses her lips together in a sheepish smile, her cheeks dimpling slightly and her fingers drawing little patterns over the bump as she nods.

“Twins.”

Ben looks down at her belly, as though he's trying to confirm what she's telling him. It looks exactly the same as it had before, of course, except—

They're not his. He's not the father. Rey is pregnant and it's nothing to do with him. She hadn't told him because she'd had no reason to, because she'd been worried he'd tell her she was being rash, because... because, even though it’s only been a few months, she's moved on.

“They’re not even mine.”

Ben frowns and looks up, not sure he heard her right. “What?”

She shrugs. "They're not mine. I’m carrying them for Poe and Finn."

Ben stares at her blankly, as though her face will reveal the answers to the many, many questions suddenly swirling around in his head.

"You know Poe?" Rey asks tentatively, as though trying to coax the understanding out of him. "My boss at Resistance Tech in Coruscant?"

When Ben doesn't reply, doesn't do _anything_ , she adds, "Leia’s protégé. She got me the job there. Remember?”

And then it clicks. The man Rey had been talking to beneath the archway, the one who looked vaguely familiar. Ben remembers where he's seen him before: in the photograph of the council that sits on the desk in his mother's study. It had been taken while he'd been away at college, just after the 2012 elections; it shows his mother at her desk in the town hall, surrounded by her campaign team, which included the bright-eyed young man with thick, wavy hair and the confident smile, who'd stood at her right shoulder. 'Dameron', his mother had called him. 'Mr Dameron', Rey had read out loud, when she'd received the job offer through the mail three weeks before Han's diagnosis. 'Poe', he’d noted, in the short and perfunctory text he'd received to say she was settling in alright after her move — the one which had said that her boss and his boyfriend were being really kind and making sure she didn't have time to feel homesick.

“You’re…”

“A surrogate," she nods, looking relieved that he’s finally caught on. "Yes. What you said about my parents that night—”

A residual shard of guilt twists uncomfortably in Ben's stomach. “I’m so sorry—”

Rey shakes her head, dismissing his apology.

“No, you were right. They were terrible parents. They didn’t deserve to have a child. But Finn and Poe do." She smiles shyly, stroking her belly again. "They were there for me when I moved to Coruscant, and when I found out that their surrogate had backed out at the last minute..." She shrugs. "I couldn’t let them miss out on their opportunity to be a family.”

It's such a _Rey_ thing to do that it suddenly makes perfect sense. It's rash and crazy and heartfelt and _kind_. It's hopeful. Somehow, after everything life has put her through, she still manages to hold onto her faith in people and it's breathtakingly beautiful.

“I assumed your mum had told you,” she says, looking up at Ben, unable to hide her concern.

“She didn’t.”

Rey nods. “She’s had a lot on her mind.”

Ben nods too. “Yeah.”

And, somehow, it's alright. He'd thought, for a hot minute, that he was going to be a father but he's not and, although there's a part of him that's achingly disappointed, he's okay with it. It's like she'd said, all those months ago: ‘this isn't the time for this’. There's so much he still has to put right, with Rey, with his mom, with the memory of his dad. He needs some time to get his head in order and becoming a father in little over a month's time wouldn't have helped with that, so while he's disappointed now, there's a part of him that knows this is for the best in the long run.

Still, the prospect of suddenly being faced with a child of his own has made him realise that he needs to work through the numbness until he can be of use again to the people who need him in their lives — his family — whether they're blood or not.

“You think I wouldn’t tell you if I was having your baby?”

The question brings an abrupt end to Ben's navel-gazing and he lifts a hand to awkwardly run through his hair.

“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me," he explains, "after what I said.”

Rey blows out a breath, her hands falling down her sides to rest at her hips.

“I was angry with you, for a long time...” And Ben can believe it — he knows how stubborn she can be — and the unimpressed look on her face is testament to the truth behind her words.

“I didn’t mean it," he says again, sheepishly. "I didn’t mean any of it.”

Rey lifts her eyebrow. “Not _any_ of it?”

He's about to answer, 'No', when the intonation of her question makes him pause.

_"Rey, I want you to be with me."_

Eyelashes flutter over a faraway look as the memories trickle through Ben's brain.

_"I want us to be together."_

His lips suddenly feel very dry and his tongue flicks out to wet them before he ventures, “Well, I meant some of it…”

Rey's hands slip from her hips and a smile begins to play at the corners of her mouth.

“Yeah? What part?”

Ben isn't sure whether to trust this. His luck can't be this good. The fact that she hadn't thrown his apology back in his face had been enough for him.

Still, in the spirit of not being cowardly any more...

“The part where I said I love you.”

Rey snorts and Ben winces, but then she says, pointedly, “You didn’t say you love me.”

Ben thinks back, sure she must be wrong, because he'd loved her for five years and there's no way he'd decided to finally admit his feelings and _not actually say it_ but...

_Shit._

“Oh." He gulps. "Well, I should have done.”

The smile that spreads across Rey's face now is unbridled, her cheeks crowding her beautiful, hazel eyes, which sparkle as she looks up at him.

“Yes," she laughs, her dimples making him feel weak at the knees. "You should have.”

He presses his lips together in embarrassment and looks down at the tops of his shiny, black shoes, feeling like, as Rey would put it, an absolute walnut.

A hand appears in his line of vision for a moment before a gentle touch to his blazing cheek makes him lift his chin to meet her gaze.

The smile has faded slightly from her face into something deeper, and she lets her hand fall back to her side, but the glint is still resolutely there in her eyes as she says, “And I should have said it back.”

Time stands still.

Ben's consciousness is completely consumed by soft, pink lips and big, hazel eyes and tawny freckles sprinkled across a lightly tanned brow — the kind which are only visible when they’re close enough that you could brush them with your lips if you wanted to. His heart is too big for his chest and his stomach has come unmoored.

He hears himself saying, "I thought you didn't—"

"I do," she replies, her shoulders rising in a helpless, little shrug.

The world rushes in again, in a wave of colour and sensation and sound — the cool wind rustling in the trees, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck; the gentle creaking of the swing-seat on the porch behind Rey; the deafening thumping of his heart in his chest as it fights to get out of him and finally be delivered to the person it belongs to.

"I'd spent so long—" he croaks.

"I thought you were just—" she starts at the same time.

They both stop, and he watches her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep breath. He does the same.

"I wanted to tell you," he says eventually, finally being completely honest with her. "For years."

She bites her lip against a smile and nods. "Me too."

Eight months suddenly feels like nothing, a blip, in comparison to all the time they've wasted. He'd spent so long being afraid — so had she apparently — and he'd come painfully close to letting her slip through his fingers, not once but twice, but he's here now and so is she and he doesn't have to be afraid any more. There's nothing left to be afraid of.

"I've missed you," he breathes, "so much," and it's a relief to finally admit it.

She takes a little step towards him, her hand rising to brush his, and he lets his fingers twine with hers as he hears her say, "I missed you too."

Rey had kissed him first, last time. He kisses her first this time.

His neck dips, his shoulders curling inwards as he sways towards her, and his lips glance against hers— just at the same time as his groin knocks awkwardly against her bump. She shifts her foot backwards, to steady herself, and Ben is lifting his other hand to her cheek, to draw her face up to him, when he feels her shy away.

He quickly pulls back to study her anxiously.

Her thumb skates lightly along the length of his forefinger then slips away as she pulls her hand out of his, letting it rise instead to rest against her bump with its pair. She's chewing the inside of her lip, he can see, and her eyes are downcast.

"Ben..." she starts hesitantly, and he feels his stomach sinking. “Maybe we should revisit this conversation in a few months."

Her eyes are on her bump as her hands run back and forth and it dawns on him what she means, why she's pulling away, why her walls are sliding up.

"How many have you got left?" he asks.

"Four..." she replies, although from her resigned tone he would have guessed she'd meant years, not months.

Ben can't help the look of shock that crosses his face as he huffs out, "Seriously?" Her eyes fly up to his, wide and unsure, and he doesn't make it any better when he chokes off his laugh by saying, "You're massive!"

Rey bristles and he sees her shoulders drop as she squares up to him. "There are two of them in there, you know?"

Ben forces the amused smile from his lips by pressing them together, trying to match her seriousness.

"Tell me if I'm wrong," he ventures, "but... I figure, if you're this big now..." She glares at him warningly. "...You're probably going to need someone around to go out and buy your snacks when you're too big to walk."

The smile that breaks across her face is like the dawn — it’s light itself.

Before he knows it, there are arms hooked tightly around his neck and he's being yanked downwards, his torso forced to curve over a warm, solid bump, as Rey hoists herself onto the toes of her combat boots to crush her mouth to his. It's messy and uncomfortable and _perfect_.

As he holds her, his arms snaking around her waist to keep her close, Ben promises himself, and her, that he's never going to let her go again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only the Epilogue to go now so thank you all for sticking with me and I hope this makes up for all the hurt you've had to endure at my hand. ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Brief story note: I know that western law usually prohibits women who haven't had their own children from becoming surrogates but, for the purpose of this fic, I'm choosing to believe that the surrogacy laws of "Coruscant" are different. Either that or Rey, Finn and Poe had a wild night with a bottle of wine, a stack of porn mags and a turkey baster... You can decide.
> 
> P.S. The "walnut" references are for you, [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett). 😉


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [lizzysbennett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzysbennett/pseuds/lizzysbennett)!
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me on this. All your comments, kudos and bookmarks have been so heartwarming throughout this process. I really hope this chapter gives these two the send off they deserve and that you all like it. ❤️
> 
> * * *

A deep, laboured sigh escapes Rey’s lips as she shifts uncomfortably on her couch. In all honesty, she barely remembers what it felt like to _be_ comfortable. She hasn’t been comfortable for months. She’s the size of a whale. No, a house. No, _an apartment block_. Her due date came and went almost a week ago and, still, not the faintest whiff of a contraction. She feels like she’s going out of her mind. She must have eaten every pineapple in the district and she’s become good friends with Babu, the delivery driver from the Indian restaurant two streets over, who’s been dropping off extra-large portions of vegetable dhansak, with garlic and chilli fried rice, onion bhajis and lime pickle, almost every other day. Her backside is numb from bouncing on that sodding birthing ball and if she has to drink any more of Leia’s Red Raspberry Leaf tea, she’ll lose the will to live.

Of course, the sex has been an unexpected upside. Ben has been _very_ obliging.

Oh, Ben. She doesn’t know what she would have done without him these past few months. He’s practically fallen over himself to attend to her every need, patiently rubbing her aching feet and back, putting up with her unpredictable moods and even fulfilling her entirely unreasonable demands for snacks at strange hours of the day and night.

In fact, that’s where he is right now, out searching for Doritos at her behest. He had grumbled when he’d left the apartment they share — he _always_ grumbles — but Rey knows that there was no real exasperation behind it. It’s their unwritten rule, after all: Ben brings the snacks. Their romantic relationship may have gotten off to a stuttered start, but it’s built on firm foundations — friendship, loyalty, understanding and Doritos.

And Galaxy Wars, which, if Ben doesn’t hurry up, he’s going to miss the last ever episode of!

With a groan, Rey rolls onto her side, letting her bump’s shifting centre of gravity do most of the rolling for her, so her fingers can scrabble around on the floor for her iPhone. She feels the edge of the rubbery case against the tip of her forefinger and she stretches her arm out until she can scrape the corner up. When she pulls it to her and shifts back up to lean against the armrest without having had to move out of her seat, she counts it as a victory.

She opens up her message history with Ben. They don’t text much anymore. They haven’t for a while, not since he moved to Coruscant to live with her. They used to talk about everything over text, filling in the time between when they saw each other last and when they’d see each other next, but these days the texts have become more perfunctory, more domestic.

_Long story but I’ll be late home tonight._

_Plus side, I don’t have to work until 11 tomorrow._

_Can you get next Friday off?_

_I have an ultrasound appointment._

_Got one block of that cheese you wanted._

_It cost me $9. Was the most expensive block of cheese ever!_

_Better be the best damn cheese this side of Kuat._

Rey smirks as she re-reads that last one. It had been good cheese, worth Ben’s teasing.

She tucks her legs up under her as she begins to type a new message.

**_Sun 29 Mar,_ ** _19:26_

_Where are you? It’s starting soon._

A commercial is playing on the TV screen, advertising fabric softener. Rey watches it idly as she waits for Ben’s reply.

Her phone buzzes in her lap.

_Do you have any idea how hard it is to find, specifically,_

_Flamin’ Hot Limón flavored Doritos in Coruscant?_

Rey’s response comes to her quickly and she hits ‘Send’, grinning.

_From your tone, I’m guessing hard._

The reply is nearly instantaneous.

_You can’t hear my tone._

_I can imagine. I know you, Ben Solo._

She does know him, almost as well as she knows herself. Better, perhaps.

_Rather than imagining my tone, why don’t you_

_just pause the TV? I’ll be back in a few minutes._

Rey smiles to herself and grabs the TV remote, hitting pause just as he’d asked her to. She doesn’t know why they still insist on watching Galaxy Wars live each week. Before their argument, it had been a way of ensuring there was a regular mark on the calendar. However busy either one of their lives had become, with finals or jobs or other friends, that time had always been carved out as Galaxy Wars time — Ben and Rey time. It had given them the excuse they’d needed to turn down invitations or to return home early from days out. It had offered them the permission they’d needed to just be together, for one night a week, without having to explain why they needed each other’s company so badly. Seven thirty on a Sunday evening had become sacred.

During the long months they’d spent apart, Sundays had been difficult for Rey. For Ben too, he’d admitted to her in the days following his dad’s funeral. Rey had spent the end of most weekends curled up in her Coruscant apartment, alone, resolutely watching (but not really _watching_ ) episodes of The Real Housewives to try to take her mind off of the gaping hole in her life that Ben’s absence had caused.

The break between seasons of Galaxy Wars had helped, she supposes. She _had_ intended to watch the last two episodes of the season their fight had interrupted at some point during the break. Honestly, she’d intended to watch them the night she’d messaged him and he’d told her he’d already gone ahead and seen them, without her. Somehow, though, she’d never got around to it. When they’d met again, eight months later, she still hadn’t known how it ended.

Neither did he, it had turned out. His stinging text had been an attempt at pre-emptive self-defence, like a lot of the things he’d done which had wounded her that month. Once they’d had the chance to talk through it all, after exchanging vows of complete honesty, it had felt like slipping into the comforting embrace of a favourite sweater to snuggle up beside him on the familiar couch of his old apartment in Chandrila and catch up on everything they’d missed in the show.

That was more than three years ago now; three seasons of Galaxy Wars have come and gone, with none but this final episode left to watch. So much has changed since then, in the show, but more so in the life she now shares with Ben. It’s all documented in the photographs that line the walls of their apartment, printed in a rainbow of colours and mounted in an assortment of frames, which Rey has scavenged from various second hand shops and the garage sales in the suburbs which she likes to drag Ben to at weekends.

Her eyes drift over the prints.

There’s the one of Finn and Poe holding their two little girls, crowded around the hospital bed where Rey sits, looking exhausted but grinning more broadly than she had ever grinned in her life before. Ben had taken that one. He’d been there for her all the way through the labour, even though he hadn’t had the faintest idea what to do. She remembers his face — drawn and pale, with wide, scared brown eyes — and the way his hand had crushed in around hers until the midwife had warned him sternly to ease off. Rey hadn’t minded, though; she’d liked knowing he was there, even when her eyes had been screwed shut through the agony.

He had seen her through the pain, both during the birth and afterwards, when Poe and Finn had squeezed her goodbye and left with the two precious girls Rey had sheltered and nurtured inside her for nine long months. Ben had never complained about the silent tears or the way she’d been incapable of going without touching him for more than five minutes at a time; he’d never made an issue about the three weeks of unpaid leave he’d had to take from work when his girlfriend had turned into, in Rey’s words, 'a weepy limpet’. He’d quietly let her have her time to grieve and adjust, and she’d realised then what a mistake she had made by not paying him the same courtesy when he’d needed it. She had tried to apologise, but he hadn’t let her. He’d just told her that, without her boldness on the night he’d learned about his dad’s diagnosis, they might never have admitted how they felt about each other and that, even though the months apart had been long and lonely, they’d found their way back to each other in the end.

The next photo along has Ben in it, although you can’t see much of his face, since it’s more than half covered by the drool-soaked muzzle of an enormous Newfoundland, standing on its hind legs with its front paws clumsily catching at the shoulders of Ben’s black t-shirt. Rey can see herself there too, at the edge of the frame, bent double with laughter, Leia’s hand resting on her shoulder, as the pair of them watch Ben fruitlessly trying to wrestle Chewie off him. The angle of the photo is all askew, since Luke, who’d been taking the picture, had dropped the camera a moment after hitting the capture button — to help, he’d said, although Rey had got the distinct impression he’d been silently egging the dog on.

It’s strange, Rey realises; they’ve spent more time at Leia’s home on the outskirts of Chandrila in the years since they’ve been living together in Coruscant than they had in all the time they’d lived less than thirty minutes away. They go for the weekend now and stay until they’re full of lunch on the Sunday, before driving home in time to curl up together on the couch at seven thirty. Rey has watched as Ben and Leia have found a kind of companionship she’d never seen in them before. She’s noticed the way Leia insists on always laying an extra place at the head of the table for someone who isn’t there anymore, and she’s seen the way that Ben has gradually assumed the duty as his own over time, smoothing out the napkin and lining up the cutlery just so. She’s caught the fondness glimmering in Leia’s eye when she looks at her son, and the warmth reflected in Ben’s since he has finally been able to acknowledge it.

The photograph which hangs immediately beneath the one of Chewie’s victorious lick is older, with a slight sepia tinge and vignette edges. Rey doesn’t know who took that one, although she suspects it might have been Ben’s godfather, Lando. The Falcon looks majestic in it, brand new and gleaming in silver and blue. Han is standing astride one wing, an ebony-haired infant cradled in his arms. He looks proud of himself and so much like Ben that it makes Rey’s heart stutter every time she sees it. Leia is sitting at his feet with her legs dangling over the edge of the wing, young and breathtakingly beautiful, her long, chocolate brown hair twisted around her head in an intricate but practical braid as she laughs at some long-forgotten joke. Luke must have heard the joke too, or perhaps he’s the one who told it, since he’s grinning from the ground, his hand laid fondly against the side of the Falcon’s nose cone.

Rey had been a little surprised when Ben had come back from helping his mum sort through Han’s things with the photograph in tow. She’d never seen any kind of family mementos in his apartment in Chandrila. It had always been neat, tidy and minimalist. She used to tease him about it looking like a show home for depressed people, dressed as it was in shades of black, grey and navy. There is more life represented in that one photograph than he’d had in the sum of his possessions before. When he’d brought it home, he’d just shrugged and said he liked it; Rey doesn’t need to be told why. The smiles are uncomplicated. The flow of time will never have the chance to dampen them. In that moment, there is only love. It’s family — his family, and hers now too, since they welcomed her in with open arms.

Her hand runs idly over her stomach as she looks up at the wall of memories. She likes seeing them there, watching over her, reminding her that she’s not alone anymore, that her child will never have to know the kind of loneliness that she once did. Although, in all honesty, she only needs one photograph for that. It’s the smallest one and it’ll fade one day — polaroids aren’t made to last, displayed on the wall like this one is — but it’s Rey’s favourite. It’s the most recent addition to the little collection on the wall, only added a few months ago, but that means Rey can remember every little detail of the moment it was taken. It’s not a good photograph by any means. At least both their faces are in it — hers and Ben’s — although the bottom left corner is taken up by an expanse of Rey’s outstretched arm from where she is holding the camera out in front of them. Ben is bending his knees behind her in an awkward crouch, so that his chin rests on her shoulder, and both of them are grinning like a pair of idiots, their cheeks a riot of dimples, as they stand on the steps in front of Coruscant’s City Hall.

The picture has cut them off at shoulder height, so there’s no record of the way Ben’s hands had slid around Rey’s waist while she’d taken the shot, cradling the tiny bump that peeked out through the layers of her white dress, or the matching rings which had glistened in their newness as Rey had laid her left hand over Ben’s.

It had been an impromptu wedding. Rey thinks Ben panicked when she’d told him he was going to be a father, although he denies it. Rey thinks it’s hilarious. They’ve always talked about having a family of their own someday — it was hard not to, after Ben’s adorable but entirely misguided declaration of unwavering support at his dad’s funeral — but it had still come as a bit of a shock when they’d discovered, in August of last year, that they clearly hadn’t been as careful as they’d both thought they had. The colour had completely drained from Ben’s face when she’d shown him the positive pregnancy test and he hadn’t been able to do anything but blink at her for what felt like minutes. Once he’d found his voice again, he’d promptly dropped to one knee and asked her to marry him. Of course, she’d told him to get up and ask her again when she wasn’t holding something she’d recently peed on.

To give him his due, he’d done both of those things and surprised her five weeks later with a stunning, antique Naboo-cut diamond set in an elegant, silver band, worn smooth with use. It had been his grandmother’s, she’d learned later from Leia, who’d conspired behind her back with Ben and Luke to have it dropped off in Coruscant in time for the proposal.

Rey had said ‘yes’ without even a beat to consider the question; there hadn’t been a question as far as she had been concerned. It had always been Ben, ever since she’d caught him gawping at her tits in class the first day they’d met. She feels a connection to him that she’s never had with anyone in her life before or since. He understands her. He _sees_ her, and he accepts her in her entirety, taking the broken pieces and half-baked plans and emotional constipation along with the good he assures her is there. He tempers her recklessness even as he encourages her passions. He supports her, backs her up, and catches her when she falls. He loves her; it’s that simple, really. He loves her in every way a person can be loved, and she loves him right back.

There’s a soft click from the hallway behind her and she hears Ben’s shoes shuffling across the welcome mat by the front door as he comes inside and sheds his grey, wool coat. Rey shifts in her seat, craning her neck to try to see him, even though she knows she won’t be able to from this angle. Instead, she imagines him holding a bag of Doritos between his teeth as he hangs the coat up in the hall cupboard before kicking off his trainers and stowing them fastidiously on the bottom shelf. He’ll drop his keys into the bowl on the narrow console table — yes, there’s the chink of metal on glass now — then he’ll pad into the living room in his socks and—

A packet of Flamin’ Hot Limón Doritos falls onto the sofa as a pair of thick, strong arms wrap around her from behind. Rey smiles dimples into Ben’s skin as she presses her lips to his wrist.

“I told you I wouldn’t be long,” he rumbles into the top of her head, and she turns her face up happily to meet his warm, brown gaze. He places a sweet, chaste kiss on her forehead before moving around the end of the couch to sink down onto his knees beside her. Her hands are still on her belly and he covers them with his own as he leans in to brush his lips against her tank top.

“How are my girls doing?”

“Better now you’re home,” Rey replies, and she means it. Her heart always feels lighter when Ben’s around, and she thinks their daughter might feel the same, judging by the way she’s started wriggling at the sound of her father’s deep voice so nearby.

Ben presses another kiss to the crest of the bump before lifting his chin to grin up at Rey. He has the goofiest, most adorable grin and, although he uses it sparingly, it always lights up the room when he unleashes it. It could be her imagination but Rey is sure she sees it more often these days than she ever used to. It fills her with warmth to think that she might have had a hand in that. He deserves to smile more.

“Thank you for the Doritos,” she says as he rises to stand.

“You better let me have some,” he warns her as he lifts her legs from the sofa and slots himself beneath them.

Rey chuckles, shifting in her seat as she turns to snuggle against him. “I’ll consider it.”

She hears him snort from above her, but he doesn’t argue, just places the Doritos bag in her lap and wraps his arm fondly around her shoulders, before letting his cheek rest against the top of her head.

The remote has worked its way down the back of the couch cushions and Rey has to wrestle it out before she can fast-forward through the last of the commercials to the start of the episode.

“Last one,” she says, feeling a rush of nerves and excitement flooding her body. “Are you _sure_ we should watch it straight away? We could always just—”

“We’re watching it!”

Rey laughs at his tone, knowing he’s still bitter about the way she’d made him wait to watch Game of Thrones.

“Okay,” she says, sucking in a deep breath, her finger hovering over the ‘play’ button. “Here goes.”

“Rey…”

She pauses at the sound of her name and lifts her face up to Ben’s, the television screen still frozen. He’s looking pensive and she can’t help wondering what’s on his mind. From the way he’s staring past the TV to the wall beyond, it’s not anything to do with Galaxy Wars.

“I was thinking, while I was walking. How would you feel about calling her Hana?

“The baby, I mean,” he adds, his gaze fluttering down to Rey, as though she might need clarification. She doesn’t. It’s an idea she’s had too, although she’s been waiting for Ben to come up with it on his own — she owes him that much, after all the pain she’d inadvertently caused him following Han’s diagnosis, with her bumbled attempt to help him open up.

“I just… when my dad died, I wasn’t really in the right place to honour his memory the way he deserved.” Rey’s hand finds Ben’s and she gives a gentle squeeze. “Maybe, this way, I can make it up to him. And my mom.”

Rey smiles, meeting his uncertain gaze with a definite nod. “I like it.”

She feels him sigh beneath her, and the tension in his expression softens.

“I remembered what Luke said in his eulogy, about no one ever really being gone,” he explains, his thumb beginning soft strokes on the top of her arm where it’s resting against her skin. “I think I believe that…” He speaks haltingly, as though he’s testing out the idea as he says it. “Recently, I’ve been talking to him — my dad.” He shoots Rey an embarrassed look but she’s careful to keep her face neutral, giving him the opportunity to let his thoughts play out. “I’ve been asking him if he thinks I can be a good father.”

There’s a long pause before Rey quietly asks, “And what does he say?”

Ben gives a little huff of laughter. “What he always said: ‘I don’t know, kid. Can you?’”

Rey can’t help the grin that spreads across her face as she imagines what the words would have sounded like in Han’s gruff yet kind tone. Ben smiles too, before his expression becomes more serious again.

“Rey… I think I can.”

She feels a prickle at the back of her nose as her vision becomes glassy.

“I think you can too,” she whispers, nuzzling her face against his chest as she nods.

His hand slips up to her hair, his fingertips running gently through the silken strands, and they’re both quiet for a long moment before Ben slips a hand beneath her chin and turns her face back up towards his.

“I love you, you know,” he says, his dark brows drawn together over eyes that glitter earnestly.

“I know,” she replies thickly.

His head lowers, and then his wide, plush lips are slanting across her mouth and she sinks into him, unable to think about anything other than how lucky she is to have this big, clueless, _wonderful_ man in her life. In her daughter’s life. Ben might not have had many interests in common with Han, but Rey knows they’re going to be alike in one very important way: they’ll love their children unconditionally, until the end.

“Come on then,” Ben says, sucking in air between his teeth as he straightens up and takes the remote out of Rey’s slack fingers. “Let’s do this.”

“It’s the end of an era,” Rey thinks out loud as she turns her glistening eyes back to the screen.

“Yes,” Ben murmurs, his voice vibrating in his chest beneath Rey’s cheek. “But it’s also the start of a new one.”


End file.
